If you enjoy freshly brewed coffee, and you want to brew the best coffee you can at home, you need either a manual mill or an electric burr grinder. This isn’t an optional piece of tool for the home Barista, it’s just as necessary as the coffee brewer or machine itself.
I’d even go so far as to say that, if you’re not going to grind your own coffee beans, there’s little point in trying to brew speciality coffee at home. This is definitely true with Espresso, in my humble opinion.
There’s actually no way you can get decent results with Espresso with pre-ground coffee unless you’re incredibly lucky and the pre-ground coffee you buy happens to be ground to the wonderful grind for your machine, and there’s a slim chance of that.
Yes, some domestic espresso machines come with pressured portafilters, which are designed to make it easier to utilize pre-ground coffee, but still – regardless of how you’re brewing your coffee, you’re going to get the perfect overall experience by grinding your coffee beans freshly.
Also, it’s important to understand that pressurized portafilters are shipped with entry-level espresso machines just due to the fact that they’re so much easier to use. They’re not necessarily going to provide the best-tasting espresso coffee.
I tested this in the video below (before I was introduced to something called a shaver) with the exact same coffee, one bag of whole beans and another bag of the exact same coffee beans pre-ground (both from Blue Coffee Box), and as you’ll see if you watch the video, I could discriminate.
Anyway, if you’re reading this, you’re probably trying to decide which is the best manual mill for you, you’re probably not planning on utilizing pre-ground coffee.
While we’re talking about taste, it’s important to also point out that the quality and the freshness of the coffee beans actually matters. It amazes me when I hear from people who have spent large sums of money replacing equipment to try to get better coffee but haven’t thought to actually buy better quality, more freshly roasted coffee beans.
Try my coffee beans from The Coffeeworks, all extremely high quality coffee beans, and all freshly roasted – delivered with a roasted on date, so you’ll understand you’re not downing coffee that was roasted months ago.
Work with discount code CBNC25 for 25% off your first order at Coffeeworks
Why Manual Coffee Grinders?
I don’t utilize manual coffee grinders much these days, purely because I suffer from RSI with both wrists. Typing, playing drums, playing guitar, creating rude gestures at other motorists on the way to the studio, all take their toll.
Nevertheless if you don’t suffer from problems with your wrists, there are a few reasons that a manual hand mill may be excellent for you.
Price.
Manual coffee grinders start at around £10-20. Electric coffee grinders start rather a little bit higher than this.
By the way, if you see that there are electric coffee grinders for a similar price, or maybe £20-£3o, these are not coffee grinders.
These things have blades. Blades don’t grind, they chop, slice and obliterate. This isn’t what we want to do to coffee beans if we want nice tasting coffee.
For more on electric burr grinders:
Perfect Electric Burr Coffee Grinders
Portability.
Good luck trying to take an electric coffee grinder hiking ;-).
Another reason for having a manual coffee mill is that they’re obviously a lot more portable than powered grinders, and you can grind anywhere, with no electricity necessary, which brews them the obvious choice for grinding coffee off-grid.
For camping trips, hiking, cycling, fishing, days out on the beach, and so on, all you need is a manual mill and a source of hot water, and you have the luxury of being able to freshly brew lovely coffee via an equally portable brewer, such as Aeropress, Oomph, Nanopresso, etc.
Shot Quality.
As well as more bang for your buck in terms of the quality you can get at the same price point for hand coffee grinders vs powered grinders, there are several home Baristas who consider electric grinders to be a case of compromising quality for practicality.
This is partially down to the extent of quality you can get with manual vs electric, i.e. you’re not investing in a motor and other components, you’re investing 100% in the mechanics of the coffee grinder, meaning you must be getting better burrs, and other mechanical components.
It’s also partly down to grinding speed and the coffee beans not being heated by excessive grinding speed, which is something that the more expensive electric grinders have features to combat, such as being geared down.
Noise, or lack of.
If you’re an early riser, or I must say, if you’re an earlier riser than the people you live with – grinding with an electric burr mill first thing in the morning might not make you very popular. Grinding coffee with a hand grinding machine is a much quieter affair, and is unlikely to wake anyone up.
Unless you drop your manual grinder on your bare foot and scream really rude words at the top of your lungs. I’ve never done that, I did once wake up with my hand over my face though, screamed, and pushed it away with the other hand… 😉
I’m beginning with the budget manual coffee grinders
There will be some folk reading this, more serious home baristas, who have no interest in the extremely cheapest manual coffee grinders.
If this includes you, just scroll down a little and you’ll get to the premium home barista manual burr coffee grinders.
A quick note about cost.
Just keep in mind that when you spend more on a manual coffee grinder, you’re usually paying for better coffee, quicker coffee and a more enjoyable experience.
If you want a cheap manual coffee grinder for occasional work with and generally for coarse grinding for cafetiere for example, no problem.
The first coffee mill in this article will probably be fine for you if this is the case, and this is probably why it’s the perfect selling manual coffee mill on Amazon, as so lots of people just want a cheap coffee grinder for occasional utilize.
If you’re wanting to grind finer though, and especially if you want to grind for espresso or even finer for Turkish then you may want to consider investing a bit more, especially if you’re going to be using this coffee grinder regularly.
If it’s only occasional use, and particularly if you’re grinding fairly coarse, going for a cheaper grinder might make more sense.
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This is among the perfect selling manual coffee grinders on Amazon UK, and it’s easy to see why.
I have no idea how they’ve managed to make a burr mill this cheap, however they have, and it sells like hotcakes. That’s a really weird saying. Why would you want to buy a hot cake? Anyway, I digress.
Size & Weight:
8.64 x 18 cm. 530g
Beans Capacity:
Approx 50g, and the glass jar will hold approx 100g of ground coffee.
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations
There have been a couple of sellers selling a slightly different version of this, I’m unsure if it’s the exact same mill, however whatever the case, it’s clearly an “echo” of the famous Hario Skerton plus, which I’ll speak about shortly – however given the reviews, it does seem to be a good copy, sorry, I mean “echo” ;-).
If you’re grinding for Cafetiere, drip, or even Aeropress since these days people are tending to grind rather a bit coarser for Aeropress, a grinding machine like this needs to be fine.
If you’re wanting to grind much finer, for example for espresso coffee, I can tell you from experience that unless you start messing around with hacks/mods, you won’t be able to get fine enough, or dial in precisely enough, with a grinding machine like this.
To be honest, I don’t know how they can possibly make this mill so cheap, nevertheless they do, so if you were looking for an extremely low cost grinding machine, this may be for you.
It’s also worth pointing out here that my friends at Shop Coffee in Cambridge, sell a similar manual mill, for this and others, see:
Manual Coffee Grinders at Shop Coffee
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This is an extremely affordable manual hand mill. It’s extremely popular, as you can see by the huge number of Amazon reviews and answered questions.
Size & Weight:
17.5 x 4.8cm. 281.23 Grams
Beans Capacity:
30g
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations
This is an exceptionally cheap manual coffee grinder, and while it has masses of reviews, many of them extremely positive as you can see by the high overall score, I think you do need to be realistic with your expectations if you’re buying a coffee grinder at this type of price point.
It’s unlikely you’re going to get a manual grinder of this design much cheaper than this, and for the money, I think it’s fine, but just keep in mind that with a small manual grinding machine like this with small burrs, it will take longer to grind your coffee.
Also, keep in mind that the finer you’re grinding, the longer it’ll take, so if you’re going to be using a manual grinder to grind coffee as finely as is possible, you may be spending quite a little of time grinding, especially with one of the cheapest manual grinders like this, with smaller burrs.
If you’re grinding more coarse for things like Aeropress, filter, or cafetiere, then you may be OK – but if you’re considering manually grinding for espresso coffee, keep in mind that a little bit grinding machine like this is likely to take upwards of 3-5 minutes to grind enough for a double shot, depending on dose and how fine you need to grind for your machine and the particular bean.
If I were you, I’d consider just investing a bit more cash into a grinder and going for one of the other grinders you’ll find in this post, which starts at only £7 more than this one.
If you’re looking for a portable grinder, and you’re not looking at spending any more than the region of £20-£30 (and there very are benefits to be had by sinking a little more cash into a manual coffee grinder by the way, you’re not just paying for style or branding) my personal recommendation would be the Hario Mini Coffee grinder Slim Plus, which you’ll find a bit further down this article.
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This is probably among the many famous hand coffee grinders, it’s been around a long time and is mainly well regarded among the speciality coffee community, as a fantastic manual coffee grinder for the money.
I have this grinding machine, it was my first ever coffee grinder.
I still have it, it still works absolutely fine though I abused it by attaching a cordless drill to the top of it to turn it into an electric mill, as I was getting fed up of grinding coffee beans manually ;-).
Size & Weight:
40.6 x 27.9 x 33 cm
567g
Beans Capacity:
Around 50g (nevertheless the glass jar will fit around 100g of ground coffee)
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
With this coffee grinder, these observations are from utilize combined with scientific research study, as I truly have this hand coffee grinder, this was the first manual coffee grinder I ever bought.
The first thing to say is that I think it’s really well built and high quality for the low cost, and it grinds well for the money.
I used this for a range of different brew processes before I got my Sage Smart Coffee grinder Pro, including for Espresso coffee – OK I wasn’t able to perfectly dial in, nevertheless it was fine as a starting point.
The instructions were in Japanese, there were no English instructions, which I remember finding a little odd, but I don’t tend to RTFM anyway, a quick look on YouTube provided me with all the info necessary.
As it comes, out of the box, Skerton is excellent for a fairly wide range of grind sizes, but if you’re really into your cafetiere brewing you may want to look at the modifications you can make to this mill to allow you to achieve a more consistent grind size at a courser setting, such as the blue horse upgrade kit.
The grind size adjustments are big, it’s not excellent for fine-tuning. As I said, I did initially utilize this for espresso, but I couldn’t basically dial in – in my opinion, you’ll be OK with this grinder if you’re utilizing pressurized baskets, if you’re using traditional baskets, even though, you’d be better off with a coffee grinder which will go finer and which has the ability to more finely tune the grind size.
There’s a mod you can do for this, though, which is to swap out the adjustment cog for an m8 nut in order to make it stepless. For more on this, see this review on coffeegeek.com.
There are no points of reference either when it comes to grind settings, but you can mod this too by literally drawing a line on the shaft and the adjustment cog.
Also, you could cut a marker down the nut at the zero position, if you mod it for stepless, and put a series of numbers around the shaft, to give you some points of reference when it comes to grinding again after taking it apart to clean, or dialling in for a different brew process.
The glass grinds pot is excellent, in fact sturdy, it’s unlikely you’ll break it even by dropping it, and it comes with a lid too so it doubles as coffee storage.
By the way, the drill mod is really straightforward if you want to use the Skerton as an electric grinding machine on the budget of a manual mill, see the video below, but I wouldn’t advise you use the high-speed setting he does in the video.
I used this hack primarily to save my wrists, as I’m prone to RSI with both of my wrists. I didn’t go mad on the speed like this guy does in the video, because I’d be concerned it would wreck the burrs and also produce a poor grind, as this coffee mill isn’t made to grind this quickly.
I’d in reality advise leaving the deal with on when modding it with the drill mod so you can keep an eye on how fast you’re going.
On the whole, I think the Hario Skerton is probably among the perfect low cost manual grinders, nevertheless you’ll probably want to mod it if you’re using it for espresso coffee, particularly if you want to work with it with standard baskets.
I think with a bit of time watching good old YouTube & a little bit of tinkering, the Hario Skerton is a excellent manual coffee mill for the cash, and is capable of far more than it was probably initially designed for.
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Another coffee grinder from Japanese coffee equipment manufacturer Hario, the Mini Coffee mill Slim Plus is a popular pairing with Aeropress, due to its more compact stature and lighter weight than it’s larger sibling the Hario Skerton.
Size & Weight:
40.6 x 27.9 x 33 cm. 567g
Beans Capacity:
24g
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
This coffee grinder is similar to its bigger sibling the Hario Skerton, however a bit smaller and lighter.
It does appear to have one main advantage over the Skerton, though, as well as portability, which is the ease of adjusting grind size, and the ease of getting back to a particular grind. So if you’re wanting to brew for various brew methods, this might be a good choice for you.
The mini mill has spring loaded burrs, which offers it a slight edge over the Skerton, especially at more coarse grind settings. The Hario Skerton Pro has spring loaded burrs too and looks cool, but it’s a few quid more.
Remember, though, no grinding machine will troubleshoot the error of using poor quality coffee beans – and now here’s another totally shameless plug for my own coffee :-).
Utilize discount code CBNC25 for 25% off your first order at Coffeeworks
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Size & Weight:
Approx 18 × 7.5 × 11 cm. 350g.
Beans Capacity:
25g grinding capacity, 60g capacity in the storage container.
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations:
Clearly a similar-looking manual coffee grinder to the Hario Mini Mill Plus, above, but at a drastically lower price, I’d be interested in this little coffee grinder if I were looking for a manual coffee mill on a budget.
Primarily speaking, I think you get what you pay for. The Mini Coffee mill Plus is about a tenner more, but it does weigh quite a little bit more which does give the impression that the build quality is likely to be more robust with the Hario.
If you’re on an extremely tight budget, although, or if you don’t want to spend much on a manual grinder as you’re only going to be using it for a few days on a trip for example, and you don’t learn when you’ll be using it again, then I can learn the idea of spending as little as you can. Personally, I’ve got into the habit over the years of not buying the cheapest option, regardless of what it is that I’m buying.
If I’m looking for a particular product, and I can see there are well-established brands that have paid a fortune to develop that brand, and buying the branded product indicates paying a higher price as I’m also paying for their advertising costs, I’ll look at less expensive brands too – nevertheless I’ve come to realize over the years that sometimes saving a few quid doesn’t always make sense and that the old saying “buy right or buy twice” is in truth actually good advice.
This is likewise why I like buying from Amazon though, if I do buy something and quickly realize I’ve brewed a blunder, it’s so easy to return it and correct that mistake!
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Size & Weight:
17 x 5 cm. 450 Grams
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs:
Stainless steel 38mm burrs
My Observations:
This is in reality a actually nice looking hand coffee grinder, and it’s one of a few relatively economical hand grinders (more to come below) which appear to be based on (at least when it comes to looks) the very popular (and not so inexpensive…) Comandante hand grinders.
It has 38mm steel burrs, the same size burrs as you’ll get in the likes of the Sage Smart Coffee mill Pro, and the same size as some other popular hand grinders including the Made by Knock Aergrind, and basically 1mm smaller than the burrs found in the Comandante grinders.
I in truth like the look of the wooden knob, that’s probably more comfortable than using some of the hand grinders with small plastic knobs.
I likewise truly like the look of the little travel case this grinder neatly slots into. For the cost, this isn’t a bad shout at all in my modest opinion.
If you like this sort of Comandante style design of hand grinding machine, holster your debit card for now, as there are a couple more for literally a few quid extra a little further on in this best hand grinders post that has, even more, going for them, for not all that much more cash.
Click here to see other available colours
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Size & Weight:
16 x 5.2 cm. 430 Grams
Burrs
Stainless steel 38mm burrs
Beans Capacity:
25g
My Observations
This is another among the relatively low cost coffee grinders which appear to be based on the Comandante, at least in design.
38mm steel burrs again, 5g more single grind capacity than the Normcore.
The manufacturer claims that they’ve minimised fines and improved grind uniformity with burr blades (or teeth) in 55-58HRC hardness in 5-axis CNC machining. Also, they’ve crafted grinding easier & smoother with the bearings fitted.
So this mill appears to talk the talk. I’ve not tried it, so I can’t confirm it walks the walk, but it has some wonderful reviews.
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The Porlex Mini is an exceptionally popular coffee grinder, especially among coffee loving nomads, or just Aeropress owners who like to brew coffee when they’re out & about.
The mini simply fits inside the Aeropress, meaning you can pack it that way, which comes in handy for space saving when you’re out and about with it (although it’s not the only manual grinding machine with this feature).
Size & Weight:
15 x 9.2 x 5.4 cm. 310 Grams
Burrs
Ceramic
Beans Capacity:
20g
My Observations
The Porlex Mini is a basically popular mill among Aeropress users, it’s been around rather some time, and even though I’ve never had one, my opinion of these grinders, based purely on reputation, is that they’re well built and long lasting grinders for the price, and that the newer version is made to last longer, being made to avoid an question which could happen after a while with the original version – rounding off of the deal with mount.
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The bigger sibling of the Porlex mini II, the tall is capable of grinding 30g in one go vs 20g with the mini.
Size & Weight:
19.5 x 8.6 x 5.3 cm. 400 Grams
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
There’s not a fantastic deal to say about the Porlex mini vs the Porlex tall, other than the tall is taller 😉 and that it can grind more in one go.
The grind capacity of the mini is 20g vs 30g for the tall. The tall is the same diameter as the mini, so it will still fit in the Aeropress, however it’s 5.5cm taller.
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Size & Weight:
13.86cm x 4.6cm. 385g
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs
420-grade stainless steel, 38mm.
My Observations
The Q2, as its bigger brother the JX series that I’ll speak about shortly, is an incredibly smart looking hand coffee mill!
With stainless burrs, and an Aluminium alloy body, we’re getting into some good quality materials with this grinding machine, and again a similar design at least visually to the Comandante.
This coffee mill has 30 grind adjustments, and a dual bearing shaft, and is designed to be very quickly & just taken apart for cleaning.
If you’re fairly serious about your coffee, but not rather serious enough to spend over double the cost on the aforementioned Comandante coffee grinder, I do think the Q2 and the JX (coming up shortly) are grinders that you needs to consider.
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This is another mill very popular paired with the Aeropress as with the Porlex Mini.
The aergrind by Knock, invented by Peter Kilpatrick, was launched via an exceptionally successful Kickstarter campaign in March 2017 and has had many praise by users.
Knock started off with their hugely popular mill, Hausgrind, and then brought out a portable hand grinder referred to as the Feldgrind, which is also very popular.
Peter then decided a better, more portable hand grinder was required to pair with Aeropress, and aergrind was born.
Size & Weight:
13.6cm x 4.6cm. 330g
Beans Capacity:
30g
Burrs
38mm Specially rewarded Nerost Black Steel
My Observations
I’ve got this mill, as I said earlier I don’t use manual grinders much, definitely not due to the truth that I’m lazy, honest guv, but I’ve struggled with my wrists for years.
I’m a drummer, as I spoken about earlier, and I play guitar (badly), I type a lot, obviously, and I used to do kickboxing too, I think it all got a little bit too much for my wrists. They’re not too bad these days nevertheless I do have to watch it, I feel the RSI beginning to flare up again occasionally.
But I’ve used this grinding machine, as I wanted to get hold of one and have a go with it, given that it’s among the extremely small number of things coffee-related been manufactured in the UK, I thought it would be rude of me not to try it.
It did take me ages to get hold of one, as Crafted by Knock are a victim of their own success, I think many the time they struggle to meet the demand, which is a good problem to have, I suppose.
It’s clearly an exceptionally well made manual coffee mill. It’s fairly quick, it’s among the nicer manual grinders to work with in terms of how it feels in the hand when grinding, and it’s easy to dial in the grind. It’ll go fine enough for espresso coffee too, I’ve managed to choke a Sage Bambino Plus with it, so that’s a extremely fine grind.
I think if you’re looking for a portable hand grinder for utilize with the Aeropress (the handle slips off and fits in the rubber sleeve) I do think the Aergrind is a good option for the dosh.
Aeropress Review
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Size & Weight:
15.8cm x 5.7cm. 650g
Beans Capacity:
35g
Burrs
304-Grade Stainless steel, 48mm.
My Observations
This is the smaller of two manual grinders in this range, the JX. The Jx Pro is below, and that one is worth looking at particularly if you’re looking for a manual grinder for espresso coffee.
With 48mm steel burrs, this is a serious hand grinding machine. This is the same size burrs as the OE Lido, an incredibly highly regarded and much more expensive manual coffee grinder.
As its mildly smaller brother the Q2, it’s brewed from decent materials, stainless steel, Alumnium alloy & the wooden deal with – and with the handle design & the big burrs, this is going to grind coffee rather a bit quicker than many the other manual grinders referred to on this page.
Just have a read through some of the Amazon reviews, including the one from an engineer who has owned five other manual grinders. This guy rates this as the perfect manual grinding machine by far, and refers to effortless and fast grinding.
The majority of the other Amazon reviews are along similar lines, primarily praise for the build quality and for how easy and fast to grind it is.
If you do a little of scientific research about this grinder – or don’t bother, as I’ve already done it for you 🙂 – you’ll generally end up with the impression that this is a heck of the majority of manual coffee mill for the price, given that it’s basically over half the price of the Comandante C40.
Dave Corby’s review of this grinder, below, is well worth a watch. He’s reviewed this one, and the pro version, and if you’re not familiar with Dave Corby, he’s an expert on coffee grinders and espresso coffee machines, manufacturers consult with him when they’re developing stuff, and rely on his expertise to tell them how to make their products work better, so this is a guy whose opinion is worth listening to.
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Size & Weight:
18cm x 5.7cm. 780g
Beans Capacity:
35g
Burrs
304-Grade Stainless steel, 48mm.
My Observations
So this is the “pro” version of the JX, above. The pro is a little bit taller, 18cm tall vs 15.8 tall – and the grind adjustment on the pro is on the top vs the JX with the adjustment underneith.
The main difference, even though, is that the pro has double the grind adjustments, meaning that it simply has half step adjustments allowing you to more finely tweak the grind.
The JX has grind adjustments at 25 microns per click, while it’s 12.5 per click for the Pro, so this will simply allow you to finely tune more when dialing in. If you’re looking for a manual mill for pourover, for example, you’re possibly not going to be as interested in this finer adjustment.
This is a meaty coffee grinder, as Dave Corbey puts it in his YouTube review. At 780g, you wouldn’t want to drop it on your foot! ;-).
Perfect Manual Coffee Grinders in the UK – Conclusion
So there we have it, what I believe to be the perfect manual coffee grinders right now, from the really cheapest up to some of the best premium or “prosumer” manual coffee grinders.
There are a couple of other grinders that I’d like to include here.
One of them is the Comandante C40. I make references to this grinding machine, nevertheless I’m not including it at the moment as it seems to be really scarcely available in the UK just now, and the only listing I can find for it on Amazon appears to be a UK seller trying to charge over double the RRP.
Another is the Orphan Espresso coffee Lido grinders. As with the Comandante, these grinders are extremely popular among the more serious home baristas.
Nevertheless I can’t find anyone in the UK with stock, and I don’t want to annoy people by telling them about this wonderful mill that they can’t get from anywhere.
If this changes with either or both of the above, I’ll add these grinders to this article in the future.
Before I sign off though, I’ll extremely answer a few common questions about manual coffee grinders.
How do you fix manual coffee grinders?
This will depend on the particular grinder, they’ll all have some form of adjustment, whether that’s just an adjustment nut or wheel & whether there are numbered adjustments will depend on which coffee grinder you’ve got. What you’ll need to do first is find your zero position, in other words, find the point at which the burrs are as close together as they’ll possibly go. If your coffee grinder has markings from fine to course, in the form of sized dots or numbers, you’ll understand this immediately – if not you’ll just have to do some experimenting to figure out where the zero point is.
This video shows you how to fix the Hario Skerton manual coffee grinder, and you’ll probably find it’s the same on similar style manual grinders:
The video below shows you how to troubleshoot the Brewed By Knock aergrind, and this will also show you how to adjust their other manual grinders:
This video will show you how to fix the 1Z Presso JX & JX Pro
What is the perfect manual coffee mill?
Hopefully, by this point, you’ve got a much better idea of which manual grinding machine might be the perfect for you, but perfect is a subjective thing – there isn’t a “best” as such.
I literally think that when people are searching for something this way, generically searching for what is the best <whatever>, it shows that they’re probably not at a point that they fully understand exactly what it is they’re looking for. For example, let’s say you’re looking to buy a car – would you search for the perfect car? I don’t think you would, because you probably know enough about cars and what you want from them to allow you to search for far more specific things.
If you’re searching for the perfect portable manual grinding machine for Aeropress for example, that to me says you simply know what you’re looking for – and that’s a rather modest matter to answer, the brewed by Knock Aergrind above or the Porlex mini ii are mainly regarded as one of the perfect portable hand grinders for Aeropress.
If you’re searching for the perfect manual mill for espresso, again this is a much more detailed matter so it’s easier to answer. When it comes to espresso coffee what I’d be looking at is the size of the burrs (the larger the burr size suggests the less time you’ll be grinding for, as finer espresso grinding takes longer), the number of grind settings (to allow you to more finely tune the grind, which is more important for espresso coffee), and I’d be looking for video reviews from people who’re showing the mill being used for espresso, like the video above showing Dave Corbey pulling a shot he’s in truth surprised by, with the 1ZPresso JX Pro.
If what you’re really after is the perfect cheap manual mill, meaning that you’re just looking at the perfect bang for your buck, then the first few grinders I discuss above may be exactly what you’re after, but I would recommend that you figure out first, exactly what you need from the grinder as well as affordability.
For example, if you’re wanting the cheapest option possible but you’re wanting a super fine grind, fast grinding (so bigger burrs), and fine tuning, you may be expecting too much from a hand coffee grinder at the money you’re looking at spending, so you may need to attack the piggy bank.
How to clean a manual coffee mill?
In my modest opinion, as long as you don’t use anything wet – like water, which is usually fairly wet… you can’t literally go wrong. With some manual grinders, it’s just a case of taking them to their the majority of coarse setting and offering the burrs a brush, although with most you can take them apart easily and give the burrs a very good clean – just make sure you keep a note of how it goes back together and make sure you don’t lose any bits!
I did this with one of my electric coffee grinders, lately – primarily due to the fact that I’m a complete pillock. I took my Niche Zero apart to clean it, took the burrs out, and then I tipped it upside down into the compost and slapped it on the backside, to knock as lots of of the bits out before I continued cleaning it. I forgot I’d done that, and then spent about an hour scratching my head & wondering what had happened to the springs, which were now in the extremely early stages of biodegrading ;-). Don’t worry, I retrieved them.
The one no-no is water, please don’t dunk your mill in water or put it in the dishwasher. If you have a Google for your brand or a similar brand, you’ll find loads of videos on YouTube showing you how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble manual coffee grinders, like this one on the Timemore C2:
How long does it take to grind utilizing a manual grinder?
How long is a piece of string? Ha! ;-). The respond to to that, by the way, is half its length times two. Joking apart, this will depend, generally on how much coffee you want to grind, how fine or coarse you want to grind it, and the size of the burrs.
Grinding coarse for espresso or large batch filter brewing for example will take the least amount of time per gram, while grinding fine for espresso will take a lot longer. Dave Corbey shares in his video review of the 1ZPresso JX Pro that it took him about 30 seconds to grind 17 grams for a double shot of espresso coffee. It took me just over a minute to grind 18g utilizing the Made by Knock Aergrind for espresso. How long it’ll take with other grinders will depend on the size of the burrs, how much you’re grinding and how finely you’re grinding.
How long do manual grinders last for?
Much longer than electric coffee grinders! Among the fantastic things about manual coffee grinders is that they’re really modest, there’s very little in the way of complex parts that may break at any time. With electric grinders, there’s so much more that can go wrong with them, issues with the electrics, issues with the motor, issues with the gearing & so on – and this isn’t the case at all with good old fashioned manual grinders.
In fact, even though I’ve said a couple of times that I don’t tend to utilize manual grinders – I have loads of them ;-), I actually have a little of a collection of older manual grinders, they date back to the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and many them still work…
OK, this isn’t to say those hand grinders you buy now are brewed to last rather this long, however in truth, in some cases, I think they’ll possibly last even longer, as a lot of the original manual grinders were crafted with wooden housings, that tend to be the weakest link, and several of the many popular manual grinders these days are crafted from metal or hard-wearing plastic.
You may think that all burrs will wear, regardless of whether they’re hand-powered or electric powered, and that’s true, the burrs in manual hand grinders will wear over time – but they’re likely to wear much less than burrs in electric machines, as they’re put under a lot less stress when they’re hand powered.
The hand power vs electric power is among the main reasons manual grinders will last so long, not extremely because it’s easier on the burrs, nevertheless it’s easier on everything. When something breaks in an electric coffee grinder, it’s usually due to the truth that something occurs thanks to the power of the motor.
For example, an under roasted bean or a pebble, or a random piece of copper (which caused a little bit of a mess in one of my grinders a while back, no idea where that came from!) can jam the burrs, and the power of the motor will force them to keep going, leading to something having to give – often it’s a weak cog that offers, which is in truth put in to act similar to a fuse so that this affordable part breaks instead of something which would be more costly to replace.
When you’re manually grinding, if something like this happens, you’re unlikely to have the power to break the coffee grinder, and as you’re always single dosing with manual grinders (obviously they don’t have hoppers) you’re far more likely to notice a foreign object in your hand as you’re loading it into the coffee grinder anyway.
Why do some manual grinders cost so much more than others?
When you look through the grinders above, you may be confused as to how there can be such a massive difference between the cheapest and the a lot of expensive grinders, and the humble answer to that is, that you get what you pay for.
Again, I think this question originates from a bit of a lack of understanding or knowledge of a particular product, and that’s not a put down of any sort.
Let’s utilize cars again as an analogy. A lot of of us are fully aware of the reality that there is a huge price range when it comes to cars, so a lot of us wouldn’t be surprised to find that you can buy a brand new car for under ten grand, or you could buy one for twenty grand, thirty grand, even a couple of hundred grand if you like.
However when it comes to more specialized products, we’re often simply not well versed enough with those products to learn why some cost so much more than others. I’ve had a similar thing recently with video and audio tool for my YouTube studio.
Nearly all of the gear I’ve purchased over the past year or so while doing my best to enhance the quality of my videos has given me a similar headache in that there’s usually a massive price range, and I don’t learn enough about that stuff to understand why I might want to spend three or four times the cost on one product vs another.
I think we all value that there is a range of preference of materials, and this will impact on the price. You’ll notice that the cheapest grinders above are crafted with the cheapest materials, so that’s one thing – and when it comes to the main body of the grinder, this doesn’t in truth impact the performance. What you can’t see or feel, though, is the burrs – and burr quality will make a difference, and these can vary in cost, hugely.
This is the same with electric grinders, some of the more costly electric grinders have burr sets which cost more at wholesale than some of the cheaper electric grinders cost at retail, so this offers an indication as to the huge range available when it comes to burr quality. The better the burrs, the better particle uniformity you’ll get, mainly, and this will lead to better-tasting coffee.
The size of the burrs is part of it, bigger burrs tend to cost more, though size isn’t everything – I once heard someone say. Bigger burrs suggests fewer revolutions necessary, and less time and effort necessary when manually grinding coffee beans.
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This article to start with appeared at Coffee Blog – The UK Specialty Coffee Blog – For Lovers of REAL Coffee!
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